


1,000 Paper Cranes

by karrenia_rune



Category: Heroes (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-26
Updated: 2014-10-26
Packaged: 2018-02-22 17:41:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2516261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/pseuds/karrenia_rune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No matter how hard you try, some things just can't be changed; Hiro finds that out the hard way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1,000 Paper Cranes

Title: One Thousand Paper Cranes  
Fandom: Heroes  
Author: karrenia  
Characters: Hiro Nakamura, Ando Masahashi  
Rating: General Audiences  
Words: 829  
Reciepient: for kneazles' previously filled multifandom 'time' request.  
Request Details: http://community.livejournal.com/fic_on_demand/211217.html

Day 6 of the June Challenge.

 

"One Thousand Paper Cranes" by Karen

Five or a hundred or even a thousand different ways in two languages for a happy ending and not one of them true. 

Oh, of course, he had set out with every possible scenario playing out in his head. He would save her. Save her from the brain tumor that was killing her. By bending space and time, he, Hiro Nakamura, would save her.

And a lot of energy, and let us not forget the sheer boundless enthusiasm with which he had set on his 'quest'. That very energy and confidence had seen him through any number of dangers and obstacles before he had even met Charlie.

He had had every confidence in the world that he could save her, prevent what in the back of his mind he knew was inevitably going to happen. Charlie would die, was dying... Darn It," exclaimed  
Hiro Nakamura in a fit of mingled frustration and anger, 'Time travel makes my head hurt and it also makes verb tenses so uncomfortably unwieldy."

"I could have told you that," muttered Ando Masahashi from where he had been sitting eating waffles almost literally drowning in syrup waiting for Hiro to return from his jaunt into the future or the past, or whatever. 

Seeing the expression of joy and flushed excitement at the thought that his friend had saved the woman he loved; Ando almost had not had the heart to tell and then show Hiro's Charlie's dead body lying  
on the floor of the Fly By Night Diner. 

Several hours later as the local sheriff office and the coroner's office came to finish their investigation of the crime scene and zip up Charlie's body and roll it away on a gurney; that was when Hiro Nakamura finally came to grips with what  
happened. "Some things are bigger than me; bigger than my powers. I don't know what made me think that I could?"

"Hiro," whispered Ando, "and I will preface what I am about to say with the following," he paused and then reached stood up suddenly causing his chair to skid across the floor of the diner causing a loud screeching sound. Most the locals and the serving staff who had known Charlie Andrews the longest glanced at them and then glanced away again. They knew, and they understood, or much as was possible under the circumstances. The paper origami cranes that Hiro had given to Charlie still adorned one wall of the diner along with the balloons and the remnants of the decorations of her last birthday party. 

"Look, I don't pretend to completely understand why you have these powers, but you do, or why you feel it's your destiny to use them," Ando stopped and then added: "But I don't know if that even if you had been there the moment that she was killed, you could have leapfrogged forward or is it backwards in time in order to have prevented."

"This, this, is unsettling," whispered Hiro as he sat glumly with his head in his heads at the table with an untouched plate of waffles in front of him. 

Ando who had more than likely consumed more waffles than was good for anyone also ignored them and spent his time attempting to unobtrusively conceal his worry for his friend. Fortunately for Ando, the other man was far too preoccupied with his own worries to notice Ando's agitation. 

In the back of his mind Ando thought, "While at the outset this entire 'quest' seemed nothing more than some kind of hare-brained jaunt. Hiro believed in it; I guess I wanted to come along more in the  
sense to keep him out of trouble as much as to see if he could really do it. 'Man, back out that blistering stretch of deserted highway when he froze time in its tracks. If I had not been a believer then, I certainly am one now!"

When Hiro finally glanced up he seemed to have not only returned from wherever he went during each of his teleports but also had returned to his normally cheerful and optimistic self. "Charlie will be missed." He heaved a sigh that seemed to begin at the soles o his feet and  
then gradually build and he, at last, let it out in a big chuffing exhalation of in held breath. "I loved her, Ando. Truly, I did."

"I know."

"Ando, my friend," Hiro suddenly announced in a tone of voice much closer to the one he normally used. "I have been making a complete idiot of myself. And it is the part of a friend to tell me that when I most need it."

"Ok, if that's what you really want." Ando shoved his hands into the pockets of his slacks and turned to regard Hiro with a mingled gaze of frustration and surprise. "Ok. You're an idiot."

"Indeed. But that does not change the fact that our mission has not been completed."

Ando nodded. "Somehow I knew you were going to say that."


End file.
